Hello from Salt Lake City, Utah!

Seven officers from the SWE-UCLA Chapter recently had the opportunity to join their fellow engineers from five different states in the SWE Region B Conference. The joint conference took place in Salt Lake City, Utah from March 1st to March 3rd. Attendees of the conference represented their professional and collegiate chapters from Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California, Southern Nevada, and Utah.

The Conference was truly an enriching experience, and not just because it took place in gorgeous and historical Salt Lake City. There were numerous inspiring presentations made by accomplished female engineers, informative professional and leadership development workshops, countless networking opportunities, and a career fair.

Our section also made time to really explore all that the city has to offer: touring the Tabernacle, some light shopping, and for some, having their first encounters with snow!

Saturday was the busiest day of the conference, beginning with a keynote breakfast, numerous workshops, the career fair, the Region B Collegiate Meeting, lunch, and of course ending with a bang at the Annual Awards Dinner to recognize all of the attending sections’ hard work and continued commitment to SWE.

Conference participants could choose from over twenty different workshops for its collegiate and professional members.

The Region B Collegiate Meeting was especially crucial. Student leaders from all attending sections shared best practices in making a SWE section successful and heard important SWE updates. This meeting was also another great way for first-time attendees and newly joined SWE members to get life-long connections with members from other sections and obtain valuable advice.

From the Collegiate Meeting, our section came back proud with a knit bee (the Region B mascot), one of ten to honor the top-performing SWE sections in Region B.

Also, both collegiate and professional members seeking employment took advantage of the ten recruiting companies for internship, part-time, and full-time positions at the fair.

The final awards ceremony marked another remarkable aspect of the conference. The officers enjoyed a delicious dinner while applauding our fellow female engineers for their accomplishments.

The Conference was an outstanding experience overall: full of wonderful memories, inspiring discussions, and positive energy. SWE-UCLA officers were able to expand their professional network, learn a lot about SWE and life as a professional engineer, and still find time to enjoy Salt Lake City.

We are all looking forward to our upcoming National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland!

Written by: Ariana Thacker (President)

36th annual Evening With Industry is a huge success

On February 5th over two hundred students from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences attended the 36th annual Evening with Industry hosted by the Society of Women Engineers.

The event commenced with hors d’ourves in the side wing of Covel Commons. This allowed students to mingle with each other as well as to interact with company representatives.
After some time to meet-and-greet, the students and companies were invited to enter the Grand Horizon Ballroom for a formal three-course banquet-style dinner.
Thanks to UCLA catering, the room looked grand and impeccable.
Here, students had the unique opportunity to have a more intimate sit-down dinner with industry representatives. This allowed them to learn more about their company of interest. The event was also a chance for company representatives to look for potential hires for internships and full time positions.
There to welcome the audience was the dean of the engineering school at UCLA, Dean Vijay K. Dhir. His words of wisdom and advice were inspiring to students, reminding them that they are the future generation of innovators.
Additionally, after students had time to enjoy dinner and converse with company representatives, they were able to listen to keynote speaker, Dr. Carrie Caulkins, the Senior Manager for Allergan Global Strategic Marketing.
Dr. Caulkins is also an alumnus, receiving her Masters and PhD in the field of Biomedical Engineering from UCLA. She shared her experiences from joining a small startup company to where she is today. She also spoke about the importance of having a good balance in one’s life and to not be consumed by work. She emphasized the significance for the need to be challenged and to always aim higher. Everyone in attendance was immediately captivated by
her motivating speech. Not only did she exude wisdom, passion, and ambition, but also she brought it to a level that was youthful and entertained the students.
Following our guest speaker, a good number of students were lucky enough to win some amazing raffle prizes donated by our wonderful sponsors.
Some of the prizes included a game set from Blizzard, two iPod shuffle mini’s from Xerox, a Kate Spade purse from AT&T, Skull Candy Headphones from Intel, and numerous bags and gift baskets courtesy of PepsoCo-FritoLay, Facebook, Google, Northrop Grumman, and Amway.
Throughout the evening our generous sponsors and special guests, including Dean Dhir, SWE Advisor, Dr. Bill Goodin, SWE Alumni Advisor, Aditi Gobburu, EAA President, Len Bonilla, and keynote speaker, Dr. Carrie Caulkins were thanked with a bouquet of flowers for their contributions and advice. The Evening with Industry Committee was also given chocolate roses as a token of gratitude.
After the dinner portion ended, students and company representatives were allowed to enter the career fair. Here, students had the chance to network with numerous companies and find out what opportunities
companies had to offer.
This was a private career fair, permitting only EWI attendees to be present. This allowed for students to have more face time with representatives and have a better interaction with them. Company representatives also enjoyed this more as it is less hectic than the mad rush during the fall and winter Engineering and Technical Career Fairs.
Before the event took place, EWI co-chairs, Seema Barua and Meghana Kumar, and the EWI committee worked hard to publicize the event to sell tickets, recruit companies, and take care of all the internal logistics for planning the event.
With their dedication, about 30 companies attended the dinner and career fair and over 200 students signed up in only 3 weeks.
Evening with Industry has demonstrated once again to be an enjoyable and valuable experience for both students and companies. Feedback was positive from both sides.
This event also helped SWE in that it increased interest in the organization as well as improved company relations.
With the help from the committee, sponsors, advisors, and EWI co-chairs, this event will continue to be a great success.

Written by: Seema Barua (EWI Co-Chair)

SWE’s first general meeting reunites all of the members

This winter quarter was off to a quick start and, in order to connect executive officers with committee and general members, we held out first general meeting of the quarter on January 16th.
About thirty-five female engineers showed up in order to hear about the great opportunities SWE has to offer as well as all the great events planned for the quarter.
After running through the big events such as Mentorship Night as well as Evening with Industry and upcoming scholarship opportunities, members got to introduce themselves and learn a little bit more about each other to foster the personal connections that SWE has to offer.
Additionally, many volunteers were recruited for SWE’s upcoming Girl Scout outreach event as well as voting that confirmed we would design bro-tanks as this year’s SWE UCLA apparel.
It was great to see so many members being able to become more active and get their opinions heard!
To end the successful night a friendly competition of Pictionary was held where all the engineers got to show off their interesting drawing talents.

Written by: Jessye Palladino (Membership Chair)

A second general meeting strengthens general membership

SWE-UCLA hosted our second general meeting of the winter quarter on February 26th in the Boelter Hall Penthouse.
This allowed for a continued and further strengthened connection between the executive board and the committee and
general members.
The event started with attendees dining on free Quiznos sandwiches and socializing as they ate.
Then, Membership Chair Jessye Palladino re-introduced herself and discussed upcoming events planned for the last two weeks of the quarter as well as several events planned for the upcoming spring quarter.
The event also presented all members with the opportunity to chime in with their own opinions on upcoming decisions. In particular, a design for our bro-tanks was voted on and the tanks will be available for purchase at the beginning of the next quarter.
We concluded with a little more socializing and fun as everyone competed in a friendly quiz competition with questions about interesting and random factoids. Winners received prizes and everyone left with full stomachs and good memories.

Written by: Danielle Sink (Historian)

Northrop Grumman re-invents the SWE infosession

On March 7th, SWE UCLA hosted an informational session with representatives from Northrop Grumman. However, there was a little twist to this event compared to our normal information sessions.
Twelve representatives hosted a “Not-So-Speed” Mentoring Session where they talked about everything from their profession to career experiences to choices they made during their career. They also gave advice on the students’ academic focus.
This ended up being one of our more popular information sessions forcing us to create RSVPs to limit the event to fifty students.
During the mentoring session, there were approximately four students per mentor and they had five minutes to discuss whatever they wanted with that representative.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and, whenever we called time to ask the mentors to switch to the next table, they were hesitant to move because they wanted to be able to talk to the students more about their experiences.

Everyone even stayed for a full hour after the event so they could finish rotating through each mentor.
After finishing rotations, all the students sought out the mentor that they liked the
best to ask them any final questions they may have had.
After the extended event, we sent out a survey to the attendees to see how they liked the different type of information session we held.
Most students agreed that this event was better than most because they got to talk to such a wide range of people. They were happy that they could get all of their questions answered and they liked how it was interactive.
Also, even though the major recruiting season for Northrop Grumman was over, the representatives still collected resumes to hire more interns in their respective departments for the upcoming summer.

Written by: Rajani Bansal (Publicity Chair)

An Update on SWE UCLA's Team Tech

During winter quarter, Team Tech found a corporate sponsor and created a project design. Show Media is sponsoring Team Tech this year in order to create a mobile application that utilizes Bluetooth to improve parent-child interaction.

Due to the unique aspect of this concept, the team has been researching how to achieve this goal and study the psychology of parenting. In addition, the team has successfully created a Bluetooth connection between a phone and Arduino, such that the phone is able to communicate to the other device.

Written by: Emily Cheung (Team Tech Director)

Qualcomm infosession packs the house

On the evening of January 29, the ESUC lounge in Boelter Hall was packed and overflowing with UCLA graduate and undergraduate engineering students interested in learning, and hopefully one day working for, Qualcomm. This is the global semiconductor company that specializes in digital wireless telecommunication.
By the start of the infosession, every inch of the room was crammed with people and the rest of the line went out the door and literally spilled into the hallway.
Having traveled from San Diego that morning, the two representatives, Ashley and Leslie LaBarbera and the four interns turned full-time employees began a presentation on Qualcomm describing the company and detailing individual
experiences from specific departments within the company.
Leslie talked about the various opportunities at Qualcomm as well as the many activities planned specifically for the interns during the summer.
The various interns turned full-time employees provided invaluable insight into the company and their own unique voices added a relatable air to the overall presentation.
Although the presentation ended about half way into the allotted hour, the session lasted far later than intended due to the large number of students vying for a spot in this telecommunications company.
By the time the last student left, Leslie had a hefty pile of resumes left in her hands.

Written by: Jessica Leung (Secretary)

Professors, undergrad and grad students share a meal

On March 5th professors and graduate students joined undergraduates for a dinner together at the ESUC Lounge in Boelter Hall. 
Attendants included professors from all majors within the School of Engineering. Representing chemical engineering was Professor Michael Nayhouse Orkoulas, mechanical was Professor Gaby Bran Lavine, electrical was Professor Zoe Xu Williams, civil was both Professor Laurie Huning and Professor Manuela Girotto Vucetic, materials was Professor Chilan Ngo Huang, aerospace was Professor Karagozian, and computer science was Professor David Smallberg. 
The event started with each professor introducing their area of study, courses that they instruct, and their educational background. 
Students were able to recognize some of the graduate students present since they are currently teaching assistants. The graduate students offered the undergraduate students an opportunity to learn more about graduate studies at UCLA. 
Unsurprisingly Professor Smallberg, whom I sat with, was a delight to speak to and brought up a topic that would interest all students: how the computer science department is currently dealing with course
enrollment in popular classes. 
To those looking to speak to their professor in a more casual environment than the classroom, I encourage them to check out this SWE event next year as well as similar events.

Written by: Shulin Jia (Webmaster)

Hitachi proves that engineers have a place in consulting firms

On February 7th, SWE hosted an infosession with Hitachi Consulting Company. 
While most know Hitachi as an electronics company, it is also one of the rapidly-developing consulting firms in the market right now. 
Three representatives from Hitachi came to UCLA to speak to attending students about Hitachi's unique culture as a consulting firm with branches in the electronics market. The representatives that came were in different stages in their career with different educational backgrounds. 
Through an interactive presentation and Q&A session, engineering students were able to gain knowledge about what life would be like with a career in consulting. This gave students a different perspective on the various options and possibilities for an engineering graduate. 
SWE's infosessions provide engineering students not only free food, but also - more importantly - job opportunities and even networking experience. This infosession was no different.

Written by: Tiffany Yeh (Treasurer)

ShowMedia hosts a SWE workshop teaching engineers PHP coding

Jonathan Lau, a 2007 UCLA electrical engineering graduate, hosted ShowMedia infosessions at UCLA before. But this was our first coding workshop with him!
Jonathan wanted to come to UCLA to teach our engineering students about PHP.
He also presented on the scalability of servers so that your website can serve millions of users.
Jonathan shared some useful resources students can read if they would like to learn more on this subject.
ShowMedia is currently hiring for internships and full time positions. Jonathan enjoys teaching workshops on subjects like PHP that he feels complements the computer science program here at UCLA.

Written by: Amanda West (Internal Vice President)